When piper James MacHattieís name first
started to appear in the prize lists online and in various North
American and Scottish piping journals, I was intrigued. My mother, you
see, was a MacHattie from Loch Katrine, Antigonish County, and the name
is not a common one. Most if not all of the MacHatties in Nova Scotia
are descended from one of three sons of the same pioneer family. Could
a MacHattie from Saskatoon be connected? This past July, I had the
opportunity to find out when I taught with James at the Ontario School
of Piping. The night I arrived at St. Andrews College in Aurora, I
spoke to him about his MacHattie roots. "Nova Scotia," he said, "but
they originally came from a little farmstead called Stockley near
Dufftown, Banffshire, in Scotland." There was no doubt about it. We
were cousins. Another piper in the family!

James Alexander MacHattie
was born Frobisher Bay, on Baffin Island in the Northwest Territories
(now Iqualuit, Nunivut) in 1974. "My parents were not long out of
university," James explains. "Mum was a doctor and she took a position
there for a year." When James was about six months old, the family
moved to Leaf Rapids, near Thompson, Manitoba, and then on to Marathon,
on the north shore of Lake Superior. James picks up the story. "When I
was five years old, my parents decided to move the family into the
boreal forest of Northern Saskatchewan, to a lake north of Le Ronge
with the nearest road about twenty kilometres away. My father went
ahead and set the foundations for the house, and then the family moved
up there. We spent the first summer under a tarp, slowly building a log
house, which we never actually finished in the seven years we lived
there. We didnít get electricity until the last year, and we never got
running water.

"My sister and I took correspondence lessons with Mum and Dad
helping out. Mum was the math whiz and Dad helped out with geography,
writing and that sort of stuff from September to about May each year.
Our lessons were intense, very concentrated for three hours each day.
In the summer, we spent as much time as we could out in the forest, but
in the winter we read a great deal. We read Arthur Ransome, C.S. Lewis,
Robert Louis Stevenson Ė books like Swallows and Amazons, Watership
Down and so forth, all the childrenís classics. My sister Edith and I
got into reading above our level simply because we did so much of it."

Although they were isolated from the rest of the world for much of
the year, they werenít lonely. "The family across the lake had two
daughters," James explains, "and another family just to the south of us
had a daughter as well so there were five children on the lake at that
time. I happened to have been the only boy but, at that age, it didnít
matter. We were always out playing with sticks, and rafts, and things
like that. My dad played guitar and banjo, and piano, and my mother
played the Autoharp. The people on the lake south of us both played
violin with the Saskatoon symphony orchestra before they moved up
north, so we would have great sessions playing music and singing,
mostly folk music, a little Celtic. My parents taught us recorder so we
read and played music from an early age.

"At least once a year we would come out for about a full month to
visit grandparents in Toronto and Ottawa. We always looked forward to
playing with our cousins. The only way to get back to our place in the
winter was to cross country ski in, or to fly in on an airplane that
could land on the frozen lake on skis. In summer, it was either canoe
and portage your way in or take a floatplane."

In 1987, when James was twelve, his family moved south to Saskatoon
where he entered school in the eighth grade. "That was a real shock,"
James remembers. "Edith and I were both outgoing kids, but that ended
when we got into public school. There were about twenty-five students
in my class, and they all knew about me being brought up in the boreal
forest and so on, and they were interested in all that. I didnít know a
lot of things Ė how to give Ďhigh fivesí, or play volleyball, or
basketball, but the kids in my class wanted to show me how to do
everything. It wasnít so easy for Edith, but by the end of high school,
she had made a lot of friends too.

"I started piping that same year. The 78th Frasers from
Toronto had just won the World Pipe Band Championship, and from the
very beginning I wanted to become good enough to play in that band.
Bruce Gandy played a solo on their CD that I loved and he was sort of
my hero. He came out to judge at the Saskatoon Highland Games and after
that he became my idol.

"The Saskatoon Boys Optimist Pipe Band advertised for students to
start their instructional program. As a child I had told my parents
that I wanted to play bagpipes. Dad remembered this and signed me up. I
started off with an old army piper named Hugh Fraser. I moved fairly
quickly and ended up in the junior band. I think that perhaps I made
that transition too soon as I started crushing doublings and things
like that in an attempt to play fast enough to keep up with the band,
which was led by Gordon Findlater. He and Hugh Fraser really set the
foundation for my playing."

Soon after, James started taking lessons from Dayle West who
introduced him to solo competing and what it takes to be a competitive
piper. "He pushed me harder and that was what it took to really get me
going," says James. "We had our good seasons and we had our bad seasons
as the band grew. It was a fairly good group, with good players coming
out of it. Danielle Brin, for example, is one. She has been playing
with the Simon Fraser University Pipe Band since 1995.

"After a couple of years with the kidsí band, I started playing with
the local Grade 2 band. At the same time, I started to play with Neil
Dickieís Grade 1 Edmonton Caledonia Pipe Band and played in two World
Championships with them. I was worried that Neil might have thought I
was a cocky young piper from Saskatchewan, and was joining the band
only because they were going to Scotland, but that wasnít really the
case. I asked him for some piobaireachd lessons but he didnít feel
comfortable doing that. Instead, he passed me some tapes that were a
help to me at that time.

"When we finished high school, a bunch of us decided to move out to
BC. We had been attending the summer schools at Coeur DíAlene in Idaho
and had met a lot of the west coast pipers there, Jamie Troy, Alan
Walters, etc. I joined Jamieís City of Victoria Pipe Band but I stayed
there only for one year. I also took private lessons from Alan Bevan,
and he and I joined the SFU band together in the fall of 1995, just
after the bandís first win at the Worldís. There we came under the
influence of Terry and Jack Lee. I stayed with the band through to
2000, and during that time we won two more World Championships."

Jamesí first trip to Scotland with SFU was in 1996. "What a strange
year that was," James recalls. "The SFU band was the reigning World
Champion. After all the bands had played, there was a lot of
apprehension leading up to the announcement but when it came, there we
were, champions once again. It was incredible.

"The win that I will never forget, however, came in 1999. My fiancť
Kylie Macintosh was on that trip playing with the Abbotsford Police.
Her younger twin sisters were playing in the Robert Malcolm Memorial
Pipe Band, and I was one of the instructors of that group. SFU won the
Grade 1 event and Robert Malcolm Memorial won the juvenile section.
What an incredible feeling! It was almost like winning twice on the
same day!"

While in BC, James studied at UBC acquiring both a Bachelorís Degree
and a Masterís Degree in Classical Studies. In the fall of 2000, he
transferred to the University of Toronto to study for his doctorate,
and is now entering his fourth and final year there. When he came east,
it was anticipated that he would play with the 78th Fraser
Highlanders, but that is not what happened. "If you had asked me when I
first started if I would have jumped at a chance to play with the
78ths, I would have said yes, but over the years I had come to know
Iain MacDonald and respected him as an individual and as a player. His
Toronto Police Pipe Band was in a re-building stage and Kylie and I
thought we could bring something to help with that. Itís been a great
experience, first of all because Kylie and I are there together, and
secondly because it is terrific to play in a band that, year after
year, is making steps forward. Itís not that long ago that the band was
playing in Grade 2 and now weíre a competent Grade 1 band."

In terms of solo playing, Dayle West got James
started and instilled a work ethic that has carried him
over the years. "What really made the
difference, though," says James, "was attending summer schools. Andrew
Wright would come from Scotland and I would have a chance to study
piobaireachd with him, which lit a bit of a spark. Alan Walters got us
playing the fun stuff Ė hornpipes, jigs, etc., and Jamie Troy got us
into the heavy marches, strathspeys and reels. When I moved out to
Vancouver, I got hooked up with Alan Bevan. I was a Grade 1 player by
then, but not getting any further. After a year with him in which I did
really well in the Grade 1 solos, I moved up to Open. Alan got me over
that hump. I had been on a plateau, I guess, and needed a push. I had
some lessons with Jack Lee, but most of my progress was as a result of
working with Alan Bevan."

James benefited from playing in the SFU Pipe Band as well. Pipe
Major Terry Leeís analytical approach coupled with his brother Jackís
emphasis on expression and phrasing helped him in preparing his solo
pieces. The first year in Toronto, however, was one of major
adjustments. James continued practicing mostly on his own, with some
input from Alan Bevan when he was here, but then he approached Bill
Livingstone and asked if he would be willing to take him on. "Since
then," James continues, "Iíve been going to him. He has a way of
explaining things about piobaireachd that has made me much more
confident about my playing that I ever was before."

James has a long list of competitive awards to his credit. For
example, he won the BC Pipersí Knockout Competition, and later placed
first in the "B" Marches and second in the Silver Medal in Inverness,
Scotland. He also won the Marches at the Royal Braemar Highland Games.
In 2002 he won the light music at the Livingstone Invitational and
followed that up with the Gold Medal for Piobaireachd and a first in
the MSR at Maxville. Before our interview in early July of 2003, he had
won the Cameron-Gillies Banner at the Dan Reid Memorial Competition in
San Francisco.

"I compete in Scotland regularly," says James. "I was invited to
play in the Gold Medal the year after taking the second prize at
Inverness. I played a fairly good tune, but didnít place. Iíll go back
and try for the Silver Medal and the "A" Light Music again this year,
and I will persevere for as long as it takes, I think. My goal is to
play well, play the best I can. Whether or not I win the Medal is out
of my hands, but Iíd rather proceed on to the Gold Medal events with
the Silver Medal behind me instead of getting into the Gold based on
high placings."

James composes music, but is very picky about what he gives out. "A
lot of my attempts end up in the garbage," he says. "About one in five
pieces comes out for public scrutiny, and thatís usually with a bit of
prompting. Themes for tunes will pop into my head at the strangest
times and Iíll scribble them down on a piece of paper. Later, when I
want to try to work on them, Iíll search frantically for the bits of
paper. There are scraps like that all over the house. SFU played a
couple of my tunes in their medley in 2000, and the waltz arrangement
of "Rocking the Baby" at the end of the í99 medley was mine. I have a
number of tunes published in Colin Mageeís book. If people like a tune
I play, Iíll pass it on, but I donít make a big issue of getting my
tunes out."

James played with SFU on their recordings "Live In America" recorded
in Chicago and "Live At Carneigie Hall" recorded in New York. "The
recording of our concert at Carnegie Hall went better than we had
hoped. The tone is quite well sustained all the way through. As you
first march onto that stage, your nerves are on edge, and the adrenalin
is pumping, but once you get going, you start to have fun and it was a
great time. Neil Dickie was a tremendous MC, and had the audience
psyched up for our performances."

James has also done some teaching. "I take private
students, and Iíve taught for a few years at Piping Hot Summer Drummer,
near Vernon, BC which is a summer school organized by Reid Maxwell and
Jack Lee. A lot of my teaching experience came from working with the
Robert Malcolm Memorial band. I learned a lot about what to expect and how
to work with kids. I learned how to set chanters just by working with the
kidsí band, and I use that experience now setting up the Toronto Police
band. In a way, I think working with the kids was a better way of learning
those skills then just coming in at the Grade 1 band level. Iím more than
happy being behind the scenes, helping out, and not being the pipe major,
as Iím doing with Toronto Police. I love working with kids, though, and
working with a juvenile band can be more rewarding in some ways than
playing in a Grade 1 band. A combination of the two would be great!